It occurs to me that the folks who are screaming in ever more shrill voices, pounding on tables with their shoes, and otherwise raising a humongous stink about "religious freedom" and discrimination, when what they really mean is their<\/i> freedom to discriminate against people based on their own religious beliefs … are, in the long run, hurting their own cause.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, this sort of nonsense cannot stand. It is not religious discrimination when your job involves doing providing services that you may not be religiously allowed to partake of. If you are a pharmacist, you are expected to provide all legal medications that someone comes up to you with a legitimate prescription for, not decide which meds are for immoral purposes and which are not. If you are a counselor, you are expected to provide counseling services based on professional standards, not on what you think is religiously kosher (so to speak). If you are an employer, you are expected to abide by the law in hiring and firing and provision of employee benefits, and not use your religion as an out to treat your employees differently from others.<\/p>\n
There may be some exceptions and accommodations that can be reached in some cases, but in general that's the way things are. I don't get to pick and choose which taxes I have to pay based on my religious feelings about different government programs. That way — and the way of these latter-day "martyrs" — lies chaos.<\/p>\n
The end result must either be a discarding of church\/state separation and the return to a nationalized church that can dominate the law in the name of whatever brand or thought-stream of Christianity it represents (and to the detriment of others), or else a marginalization of the church and a true ratcheting back of religious liberty in order to function<\/i> as a society. Both paths are not what the martyrs want, in the long run.<\/p>\n
It seems to me that a bit more judicious picking of "religious freedom" battles would be more to everyone's advantage. Unfortunately, it seems to have become an all-or-nothing martyrdom battle at every turn. And that just can't end well. #ddtb<\/p>\n
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